Mixing the CIA, Special Ops, and Afghanistan in a New Way. Good idea?

AP reports that an idea is floating around Washington, which leaves the impression of a political solution to a military problem. It seems to be a case of "What the meaning of "is" is." It strikes me as being devious and phony, but you ATSers can change my mind, I'm open. Here are some snippets from the report:

WASHINGTON—Top Pentagon officials are considering putting elite special operations troops under CIA control in Afghanistan after 2014, just as they were during last year's raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, sources told The Associated Press.

If the plan were adopted, the U.S. and Afghanistan could say there are no more U.S. troops on the ground in the war-torn country because once the SEALs, Rangers and other elite units are assigned to CIA control, even temporarily, they become spies.

But putting special operations troops in the CIA's employ in Afghanistan could be attractive to the Afghan government because it would make the troops less visible and give Afghan President Hamid Karzai the added bonus of being able to say U.S. troops had withdrawn from his country. Technically, he would be right: Troops would have been rendered as spies by answering to the CIA's Kabul station chief instead of a U.S. military commander.

Now some of the downsides.

Because this will be a CIA operation, forget ever hearing about deaths or costs or how it's being run. There will be no embedded journalists. Only the intelligence committees of Congress will ever know anything about it outside of the White House. (And will the White House tell Congress anything that would be politically embarassing?) And if this idea is ever accepted, how will we know it? It will be classified, as all CIA operations are.

And if one of our SpecOp soldiers is captured? He will be treated as a spy, not covered by the Geneva Conventions.

Finally, these soldiers will be removed from military control. That means our military will have fewer soldiers it can use to respond with, and they are already facing big cuts in their personnel levels.

This seems to be a politician would like, but I don't happen to from what I've heard of it. Straighten me out if I'm wrong.

Here's the link: www.boston.com...

reply to post by charles1952


One of the things I have found in my three decades of service is that Soldiers will always come to a way to pacify a town or region. They do it through interacting with the locals. Learning their ways and teaching them the west ways. But always through respect.

Then the yabooheads from the State Department or NGOs step in and muck everything up. At first they take credit for pacifying a region and then blame others when it goes all haywire.

But it is still boots on the ground that make it all work.

reply to post by charles1952
I think it's a miserable idea because it invalidates the reasons why we are there in the frst place. If we can't justify our reasons to be there with the military, then our reasons to be ANYWHERE are weakened.

In my humble opinion, of course.

This was done during the Vietnam war were SFs were operating in Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), Laos, and Cambodia with friendly hill tribesmen to stage attacks on the Ho Chi Minh trail.

The Studies and Observations Group (aka SOG, MACSOG, and MACV-SOG) secret operations caused the north to keep a lot of NVA troops in these areas to protect the north vietnamese illegal operations that would/could have been used in there operations in south Vietnam.

en.wikipedia.org...

Most of the time the MACV-SOG did not attack NVA units but identified the location of these units and called in air strikes
and they did other things like lay mines or sensors on the Ho Chi Minh trail. so that air units would know there was traffic

There were always lots of liaison officers and units from the CIA who worked nominally for the military but received their pay and high priority orders from CIA headquarters. Fletcher Prouty, who served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President John F. Kennedy reported the following (emphasize mine):

The chairman was General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, and the Marine Commandant was General David M. Shoup. They were close friends and had known each other for years.

When the primary subject of the briefing had ended General Lemnitzer asked me about the Army cover unit that was involved in the operation. I explained what its role was and more or less added that this was a rather routine matter. Then he said, "Prouty, if this is routine, yet General Shoup and I have never heard of it before, can you tell me in round numbers how many Army units there are that exist as `cover' for the CIA?" I replied that to my knowledge at that time there were about 605 such units, some real, some mixed, and some that were simply telephone drops. When he heard that he turned to General Shoup and said, "You know, I realized that we provided cover for the Agency from time to time; but I never knew that we had anywhere near so many permanent cover units and that they existed all over the world."

I then asked General Lemnitzer if I might ask him a question. He said I could. "General," I said, "during all of my military career I have done one thing or another at the direction of a senior officer. In all those years and in all of those circumstances I have always believed that someone, either at the level of the officer who told me to do what I was doing or further up the chain of command, knew why I was doing what I had been directed to do and that he knew what the reason for doing it was. Now I am speaking to the senior military officer in the armed forces and I have just found out that some things I have been doing for years in support of the CIA have not been known and that they have been done, most likely, in response to other authority. Is this correct?"

This started a friendly, informal, and most enlightening conversation, more or less to the effect that where the CIA was concerned there were a lot of things no one seemed to know.

www.ratical.org...=4157

While I agree, that the classified CIA budget will help to hide the true costs of the war even better from the taxpayer, I doubt it will make much difference for embedded journalists and captured soldiers.

The CIA had always lots of journalists on their payroll who influenced public opinion and spied for the company. In my opinion embedded journalism is anyhow more a PR stunt, than a genuine attempt by the 4th branch of government to inform the public. So far I have seen only embedded journalists cheerleading for the wars and the troops. I wouldn't mourn the death of embedded journalism. In my opinion much better information comes from journalists, who act independently on the ground.

Afghan insurgents don't wear uniforms and follow the Geneva convention. The US also has violated the Geneva conventions. The pictures of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay have angered Muslims worldwide. With the Parwan Detention Facility exists a similar prison in Afghanistan. Things like the invasion of your country, pissing on your dead, Predator drones which attack rescuers, funerals and wedding parties and kill dozens of innocent men, women and children are not seen as “collateral damage” by Afghanis. They have lost friends and family and revenge is a very important aspect of the Pasthunwali. The Pashtunwali is the ethical code of the Paschtun people, which is still followed by many people who live tribal areas.

reply to post by beezzer

The boots on the ground is accompanied by a chain of command and its accountability is underlined by the court martial system. With the alphabet agencies in command, there is no accountability as to who gave the orders for instance to drone-target a funeral procession in Pakistan, and why it was targeted. There is no reporting back. This has totally bypassed Congress . who knows whay they're already doing in Iran? And so we are now seeing two forms of drone warfare and those parallel forms imo is a really big issue we should also be discussing.

Originally posted by aboutface
reply to post by beezzer

 

The boots on the ground is accompanied by a chain of command and its accountability is underlined by the court martial system. With the alphabet agencies in command, there is no accountability as to who gave the orders for instance to drone-target a funeral procession in Pakistan, and why it was targeted. There is no reporting back. This has totally bypassed Congress . who knows whay they're already doing in Iran? And so we are now seeing two forms of drone warfare and those parallel forms imo is a really big issue we should also be discussing.

edit on 4-3-2012 by aboutface because: (no reason given)

Agreed. Any action that nessitates subterfuge invalidates the legitamacy of that action.

reply to post by charles1952


Interesting questions, Charles. 

I can see both sides of the argument on this topic. I like the idea of accountability and transparency for political reasons. However, I see the reasoning behind this potential move. I think using unconventional forces to fight an asymmetric war makes more sense and will likely reduce casualties on our end while still accomplishing our objectives.    

Admittedly, I don't know much about special operations but I've always been under the assumption that they work closer with the CIA and other organizations rather than regular military forces. When I was deployed, Ops guys were usually in and out of our areas and obviously operating from a different play book. I was never a guy 'in the know' so I can't speak to how much of a change this would really be. 

Ops guys have the flexibility to roam around and do things now that regular forces do not (hence the term Special). I don't think this move is really much of a change from the norm but I could be wrong. 

Is the President creating his own private army? He could order the CIA to, well, do anything, and it would happen. I always thought that the military would refuse an illegal order, but I suspect the CIA would treat it as all in a day's work.

It seems our president is fond of that kind of operation, SEAL raids, drone strikes, etc. As the Defense Department budget is cut, I would wager that the black budget goes up. Using the CIA as a significant defense force and killing machine makes me very uncomfortable. And while the CIA has a good reputation in Afghanistan, I doubt the rest of the world shares that opinion.

Let me get paranoid, the CIA military against the Oath Keepers or Sheriffs?

reply to post by charles1952


This has always been going on, well since Nam on anyway.
The US say they have all the troops removed, But leave behind Advisors and Instructors, Same soldiers basically but with a different title.
The US NEVER leave a War Zone entirely, kinda like Herpes.

reply to post by charles1952

Is the President creating his own private army? He could order the CIA to, well, do anything, and it would happen. I always thought that the military would refuse an illegal order, but I suspect the CIA would treat it as all in a day's work.

What is an illegal order?

It seems our president is fond of that kind of operation, SEAL raids, drone strikes, etc. As the Defense Department budget is cut, I would wager that the black budget goes up. Using the CIA as a significant defense force and killing machine makes me very uncomfortable. And while the CIA has a good reputation in Afghanistan, I doubt the rest of the world shares that opinion.

I will state again, I think the ops guys have always been this hybrid force…that was the objective when creating it. Presidents have always used covert ops (at least over the past 100 years) so this is no big change, though it most certainly has escalated as of late. I remember reading about the shift to bigger special operations before the recent Middle East conflicts even started. It makes sense in this day and age; big mass-kill weapons and ops guys on the ground rather than a conventional land invasion. It doesn’t work for all scenarios, and these forces will never make conventional forces obsolete, but I see a big role for them for sure.

Let me get paranoid, the CIA military against the Oath Keepers or Sheriffs?

I think this is more plausible than calling regular military forces to project force or control a civilian population domestically. There would be too much dissent among military members in a situation like that. It wouldn’t surprise me if the CIA and other alphabet agencies were already involved in things like this (JFK, MLK, 9/11 and even William Cooper come to mind…).

Is this video over the top??? Maybe so, but Cooper was shot to death on his front porch by federal agents. I’ve seen this JFK scenario supposedly disproved by others but who are we to believe, really? Cooper's other work on the NWO conspiracy is awesome.